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Pirates of Lombok

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Its been a rough week in indonesia thus far. I arrived in Bali about a week ago, after a frenzied week packing and taking care of my indefinitely long list of things to do in New York , barely having the time to register what i was about to set out on.

Fast forward four days which i will write about later, i jumped islands to Lombok, to climb the famed Gunung Rinjani. I was accompanied by a danish couple, our guide, and some porters and we had a challenging but rewarding hike to the summit. After making our way down to the base, the operator informed us they’d been robbed the night before (something i later found out was not infrequent) by a group of bandits with foot long knives. At knife point, the employees were forced to hand over all valuables including our backpacks. And as if that weren’t enough, they stabbed one of the guys lethally, who is now fighting for his life in a hospital.

The operator, Rudy, and his employees after a thorough search of the tiny village found some our belongings in a pool of mud a few hours later and retrieved them. It was quite shocking to see the condition of everything – shred, torn or pulled apart, specially after a cold, wet night in the mountains. I lost everything of value including my laptop, phone, go pro, nook, sunglasses and with them 5 unsynced blog posts.

So all in all, its been a bit of a shocking start to the trip. At Gili Air now which feels much safer, and I’m beginning to get over my loss and will hopefully get around to rewriting my experiences from the first week again.

As some very wise people in my life remind me, I’ve set out to have new experiences on this trip. This is just a painful reminder that in life, you cant choose your experiences.

We live a privileged life back home and aren’t victims of desperation and violence. My thoughts go out to the locals who go out of their way to be nice to you and try to make an honest living despite all the terror that surrounds them.

This is really scary, Nitya. Glad to know that you are safe. This kind of stuff had always worried me as well when we were traveling. But as you said, you can’t choose your experiences. Stay strong and look forward to the happy adventures!